


What Good are Notebooks

by cofax



Series: Life During Wartime [2]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: AU, Apocafic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-11-14
Updated: 1999-11-14
Packaged: 2018-01-08 16:41:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1135012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cofax/pseuds/cofax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life During Wartime.  Posted November 1999.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Good are Notebooks

Scully hung up the phone with care, making sure the handset connected with the charging terminals. If she didn't do it properly, the handset went dead. _Not that that's really an issue now, Dana._

He would be here in half an hour, if not delayed by the heavy Saturday traffic. Not even the most powerful in Washington yet knew what Mulder did; and if they did, how would they believe it? So the traffic on the roads was the ordinary smog-producing mass of weekend drivers involved in their own business, pursuing their own dreams, not a panicked rush of urbanites fleeing to an uncertain future.

Why wasn't _she_ panicking?

She had to pack, she realized, when her mind began to do more than just process the facts as Mulder had relayed them. Dropping her purse on the couch -- she had been about to go to a movie -- Scully moved with a dazed step into the bedroom. She stumbled past the bed and slammed her hip into the edge of the dresser.

"Ow! Shit!" Rubbing her hip with one hand, she yanked at the closet door with the other. At the top of the closet was an old canvas duffel, which Scully pulled down and spread open on the bed.

Clothes . . . no suits, she thought with a hint of guilty satisfaction. She might never wear hose again. But she did pull from the very rear of the closet the burgundy dress her mother had given her two years ago, and which she had only worn once. She rolled it carefully and stashed it in the bottom of the carryall. The rest of her choices were pragmatic: jeans, sweaters, T-shirts, wool socks, shorts, exercise bras. Even some cold-weather gear - gloves, a Gore-tex jacket, and long underwear. It was warm now, Indian summer, but with Mulder, who knew where they might end up? Sneakers, hiking boots, a pair of sandals. She was already wearing her favorite black boots.

She slung the duffel onto the couch in the living room before running her fingers softly across the name stenciled on the faded cream canvas. "W.M. Scully, U.S.N." Shook herself back into her skin. _Later._

_How much time left? 22 minutes._

Next? Pictures. 

She didn't have a lot of room: she took the time to carefully remove the photos on her mantel from their frames and slip them into an envelope stiffened with cardboard. Mom and Ahab on their wedding day -- _thank God Mulder thought to call Mom first_ \-- Grandma Scully in the last year of her life, sitting with Charlie on her lap. Bill, Tara, and Matthew last Christmas. Charlie with Adrienne, who'd left him soon after, but Dana had kept the photo anyway. She hid it when Charlie came for one of his infrequent visits. Melissa. Emily. That group shot from the day she graduated from Johns Hopkins; and one small photograph of Mulder. It was, of course, a crime scene photo -- for some reason they had few casual pictures of each other. He was crouched over something, latex covering his hands, but his head quirked up at the photographer with a lopsided smile on his face. It bothered her suddenly that she couldn't remember which case it was from.

Her hands, carefully packing the pictures into the envelope, kept moving while her mind spun to a stop. Which case was that? Maybe it was the one in Tennessee, with the frogs . . . . Why couldn't she remember?

She slipped the envelope into a knapsack and checked her watch.

_16 minutes._ There was a tiny voice at the base of her brain, whispering "Move-move-move! Go NOW!"

Computer? It was already on; she left it running on the weekends so she could check her email easily. She stuffed a disk into the zip drive and backed up her files. God willing, she might be able to access them again someday. She folded the laptop and packed it into its insulated case. Its electronics might survive, even if what Mulder had told her was true. She had to pray he was wrong . . . .

Her gaze, scanning rapidly across the room, snagged on the bookshelf. "Moby Dick," the King James Bible, and her complete Shakespeare went into the bag. Anything else? No horror -- she flinched away from the copy of "The Stand" that rested on the couch, a bookmark at page 352. There was a copy of "The Norton Anthology of English Literature" on the top shelf, a relic of an unsuccessful foray into the liberal arts. She passed over that in favor of "Gray's Anatomy," noticed the novel tucked in next to it. She hesitated, removed the battered copy of "Gaudy Night" and placed it in the knapsack with the others. _Mulder will appreciate it -- it's all about Oxford._

Time? _7 minutes._

The weight of the loaded knapsack dragging against her fingers, she thought, suddenly, that she should call someone, pass on Mulder's warning. But who could she call that would believe her? She couldn't remember the last time she had called anyone other than Mulder or her mother for reasons unrelated to work or ordering take-out. There were some old school friends still in the area, the time-blurred faces on her graduation photo; yet what could she say to convince them to go? Among her sacrifices for the X-files had been the connections, the credibility, that she could have used to save more lives.

Dear God. Her brothers. _What did Mulder say to convince Mom?_ Dana knew, with a pang she would not stop to examine, that Bill would not hear her if she called him. She couldn't bear the thought that the last time Bill might hear her voice it would be raised in frustration or despair, but she picked up the phone anyway. 

The lines were down. 

AT&T recommended that she try again later. She had no way now to even try to reach Charlie, who might have listened. Her baby brother, who might have listened, if she had thought to call earlier.

She found herself standing at the window, phone in hand. The dial tone had changed to the shrieking beep designed to annoy anyone within earshot until they reset the phone on the cradle. She hit "off" and tossed it onto the couch. 

_4 minutes._

How had she run out of time so quickly? Mulder would be here soon, and they had to get out of town fast, if the telephone system was already compromised.

Medical supplies were simple. The big chest was in the hall closet; Scully heaved it out into the middle of the living room floor. That way they would trip over it before forgetting it. Toiletries were always packed, in her field carryon; she pulled the small case out, added extra tubes of toothpaste and sunscreen, and stuffed it into the knapsack.

She looked at her watch again. 

_1 minute._ What was left?

When she hurried back into the bedroom to grab her Walkman and a few tapes, Scully saw the truck pull up in front of her building. It looked like an old Chevy, one of the ones with the auxiliary gas tanks and a trailer hitch. No camper top, though -- they'd be sleeping rough. She hoped Frohike had thought to put in a mechanical ignition -- if the worst came to pass, an electronic one would just be so much scrap metal. Mulder hopped out of the driver's seat, slammed the door behind him and disappeared around the corner of the building. He'd be here in two minutes.

The duffel bag was nearly full, anyway. Her sleeping bag was in the hall closet - she'd grab it as they left. She had her weapon and all the ammunition she could find. She was not on duty -- might never be again -- but she clipped her holster into the back of her jeans, and pulled out the hem of her cotton sweater to cover it. On the way out of town they could stop at her bank and get as much cash as possible. She didn't have a lot available, but she had the suspicion that money wouldn't mean much soon.

Money was just paper -- what about the gold standard? She opened her jewelry box, an indulgence she had justified by its organizational value, and plucked out the few truly valuable pieces she owned. Grandma Scully's engagement ring, three pairs of diamond earrings, the opal Ahab had given her on her sixteenth birthday, an assortment of gold and pearls, gifts mostly from old boyfriends. Just before closing the box, she picked up the earrings that she had not worn since her sister's funeral. They were silver, not gold, slightly tarnished now, long and bangly and glittery. They had never been her style -- soft, feminine, designed to be eye-catching in ways she could not afford. They chinked softly as she held them in her hand, indecisive. 

_Everything is going to change._

His voice came suddenly from the other room as she slipped the hook through the hole in her right ear. "Scully? You ready?"

Mulder's eyes were wide with anxiety, but he took a sharp breath as she came into the living room, her knapsack in hand. She realized that he had almost never seen her like this: no makeup, her hair disarranged, Melissa's earrings dangling to the level of her jawline.

"Yeah," she said. "I'm ready." 

Mulder picked up the duffel and the medical chest. Scully shrugged the knapsack and the laptop over her own shoulder. She checked her pocket for her phone, pulled the sleeping bag down out of the closet, and stepped through the front door. Mulder waited for her in the hall, his tapping toe the only evidence of his desperate need to be gone.

But he paused, put his foot in the door to stop her closing it. His voice was strained, filled with a mixture of fear and excitement. "Are you sure? This is it, Scully -- we won't be back."

Scully shrugged the strap of the knapsack higher on her shoulder and moved closer to her partner. Placing one hand on his where he gripped the handle of the bulky plastic medical chest, she looked at him for a long moment. Now that she was packed and moving, now that Mulder was here, the adrenaline rush had eased off, enough to allow rational thought.

The late afternoon sun, reflecting off her TV set, glanced through the open door and illuminated the side of Mulder's face. His body was entirely still now, but Scully could see the tension as his eyes flicked away from her, towards the outside door. 

"Are _you_ sure, Mulder?" 

His eyes whipped back to her face. When he nodded without hesitation, she said, "Fine. Then let's go."

She closed the door without locking it, and led the way down the hallway without looking back.

**Author's Note:**

> Burned all my notebooks  
> what good are notebooks  
> they won't help me survive
> 
> \- Life During Wartime, The Talking Heads
> 
> Note: The frogs are for JET .
> 
> Beta by Maria Nicole and Maggie McCain.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [High on a Hillside](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1141459) by [mn_x](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mn_x/pseuds/mn_x)




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